Today it is widely suspected and occasionally reported that the mania for collecting vintage cars has led to a "bubble market", with astonishing prices being paid at auction for "barn finds" which (whether they were found in barns or not) are often in extremely shoddy condition. The justification for the record prices paid is that the cars in question are so rare that condition matters less than it would for more common vehicles. If you are looking for something like a Saoutchik-bodied Talbot Lago Grand Sport fastback and there were never more than 6 on the planet, you may need to take whatever condition you find. The car in the photo below sold for over $1.9 million at a recent auction* of cars found in the barns of French collector Roger Baillon. 
The other side of this car was in even worse condition; it's presented here so the reader can get some sense of the epic task which faces the team of mechanics and metal workers who will attempt to make this ruin into a car.
The other side of this car was in even worse condition; it's presented here so the reader can get some sense of the epic task which faces the team of mechanics and metal workers who will attempt to make this ruin into a car. 
Just in case the reader wonders how the completed car might look, and why it might be worth a lot to some car enthusiasts, below is a shot of one of the surviving T26 Grand Sport coupes. Prior to the recent Artcurial auction in Paris, the record price for one of these coupes (more like the car below than the one above) was about $1.5 million.
The "barn find" virus has now infected the market for more ordinary production cars, originally made in the thousands, which are now offered as restorable projects, when not so long ago they would have been sent to the crusher on their way to the metal recycler. The Porsche 912, the 4 cylinder kid brother to the illustrious 911, has finally come into collector favor now that prices of early "small bumper" 911s have ascended into the stratosphere. A dealer in Beverly Hills now offers the 1967 vintage 912 below as a restorable project for $6,950, with the faintly apologetic but redundant note that it's been sitting awhile (it's hard, after all, to imagine what else it might do in this condition) and airily suggests that it represents "great value." One supposes that compared with $1.9 million for an even rustier (but incomparably rarer) box of parts from the Paris auction, this might be true…
Again, just in case the reader needs some prompting to recall what the box of parts on the garage floor is supposed to resemble once assembled into a car, we present a red '68 model 912 below, the product of a complete nut and bolt restoration, which was offered recently for $73,500. This amount would have bought a similarly perfect 911 not long ago, and not too many years before that, one of the exotic production racers like the 911 RS. One thing that seems certain is that it would take a professional restoration shop more than $73k to make the blue car above into the red car below. If the lucky buyer of the blue car elects to do the work at home, he or she should be anticipating years of dedicated labor, and the purchase of a truckload of parts and tools.
By this time, the patient reader may be wondering what refuge awaits the car enthusiast with less than 400 free weekends to spend on a restoration, or less than a small fortune to spend on a perfectly restored car. It turns out that one possible solution is called a new car. One wonders if the escalating fiscal and temporal demands of the collector car scene will eventually cause new cars to make a comeback. Never mind the self-driving Google robocars on the horizon (they'll be here sooner than we might like); you can get a new Miata or Mini Cooper that will run figure 8s around that red 912, and for something less than 40% of the money. Or splurge on the base model Porsche Boxster pictured below for around $20k less than the car pictured above. All these new cars have antilock brakes, air bags, and something that not even the perfectly restored show cars have: a warranty. And if you miss the charm of that old car smell, the oil spots on the garage floor, and the well-worn leather seat that squeaks when you sit behind the wheel, you can take comfort in the fact that young cars get old at the same rate that young people do. Enjoy the drive...
*Footnotes:
Readers interested in highly subjective evaluations of old car values may want to see our first-ever post, "A Review of the Monterey Auction Weekend, August 14-16, 2015", in the Archives for Aug. 25, 2015, and also "What Defines a Production Car, and Why Would Anybody Pay $3 Million for One?", from Aug. 29, 2015.
*Postscript: We finally got around to posting a retrospective on Talbot-Lago cars, including the big six cylinder cars and the racers, a few years after this post in "Talbot-Lago: Darracq by Another Name" on May 22, 2020, and posted many of the legendary "teardrop" Talbot-Lagos (and a couple Delahayes) bodied by Figoni & Falaschi in "The French Line Part 5: Figoni & Falaschi", on June 7, 2020, with many previously unpublished photos.
Picture credits from top to bottom:
1.) The Guardian
2.) Artcurial Auctions
3.) the author
4.) Beverly Hills Car Club
5.) Hemmings Motor News
6.) Porsche of North America
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